Behold The 2009 Worst Company In America Bracket!

Your nominations are in and the teams have been seeded, all that’s left to do is vote! Without further ado, the Official WCIA Committee would like to present… The 2009 Worst Company In America bracket!

The companies were nominated by you, the readers, and we did our best to seed them according to the number of nominations.

@dmolavi:
I totally agree!
Why are you even holding a contest this year?
No company can possibly beat out AIG at this.
Walmart, United Airlines, Citibank, Bank of America, Comcast, Best Buy & Ticketmaster will all have their supporters, but AIG & its obscene operations will crush the competition.
Peanut Corp would have won in any other year except for the financial meltdown.
US Air won’t get many votes, Captain Sully turns the tide for them!

And how come Bernie Madoff isn’t in the running?
He had a company, a completely fraudulent one, but still a company.

@ConroyCotta: Pfft. They (pine trees) are a cash crop. People don’t make paper out of mighty Amazon Rain Forest hardwoods. You might have a valid argument if you said “for the sake of chemical dyes being released into the environment”.

@U-235:
No, but according to news reports the Chinese are cutting down Indonesia’s rain forest hardwoods for their paper boxes.
They never bought enough of our scrap paper to come close to supply them.

@Underpants Gnome: Yeah, normally I have the instant reaction to nominate Walmart for anything along these lines, but this year I had to confess that it wasn’t the most evil by far. More like a standard evil. AIG had evil mixed with TEH STOOPID with a side order of fuckwittery.

Going to be tough between AIG (Begging money from the government to keep from failing, then frittering it away on vacations, bonuses and office decorations), Peanut Corp of America (salmonilla sandwich to kill more people anybody?) or Ticketmaster (No no, we don’t have those tickets available, but try stubhub, our VERY OWN website where you can purchase the exact same ticket for 5 times the price sold by… whoops, us!)

@Caleb Garvey: The problem with AIG isnt the bonuses. The problem is that they CAUSED the original problem which led to the bailouts which caused the media to blow out of proportion the bonuses given to people that caused the original problem.

Fair to say more than a billion people, many of whom haven’t even been born yet, will be stuck paying for AIG’s idiocy. (Debt from the bailout won’t go away quickly, and we’re already paying interest on more than $10 trillion.) PCA killed a very small number of people. With all due sympathy for the dead and their loved ones, it’s several orders of magnitude from the scale of AIG.

@David M Pondelick: I can’t believe you would even suggest the government. The point of these things are to have a fair competition. Allowing the government to be on the latter would be like letting an NFL team compete in a little league playoff bout.

Once again Consumerist has failed to include THE WORST Corporation in America “the Federal Reserve”. Who gave the money to AIG? The Fed. Who is giving away billions of taxpayers money? The Fed. Who refuses to tell anyone where the money went to and what it was spent on? The Fed.

Ugh, T-Mobile against Best Buy? Just based on the way the T-Mobile guys at the mall kiosk ACCOST everyone who has the misfortune to walk past them I want to vote for T-Mobile, but I can’t vote Best Buy out of contention in the first round. Damn you!

@scoobydoo: No, I’m sorry to tell you that is a *BRANDED* T-Mobile kiosk. I even asked them for clarification once when they wouldn’t leave me alone as I stood nearby letting my daughter look in the window of the store by their kiosk. (Asked for clarification so that the complaint I was going to lodge with their parent company would be worded correctly.)

Maybe it’s something about the district manager here or something, but every T-Mobile kiosk in the malls around here seem to have a policy of screaming at everyone who goes by and not taking no for an answer unless you actually jog away from them.

@Mike Anderson: Whoa! Mike! You’re actually expecting a bunch of guys who grouch about $200 mil in bonuses and ignore *cue Dr. Evil* one TREEELION dollars in Fed spending to be good at math?
Nurse! More coffee over here for yours truly and Mike. STAT!

Companies which screw up the economy, like AIG and Citi, do cause deaths indirectly. Anytime you take money out of the system, cause people to lose their jobs, lose health care, increase their stress, etc., a certain number of people are going to die because of that.

Nonetheless it’s hard for me not to bet on Peanut Corp., since they knowingly distributed a product that could kill people directly and quickly. Of course we don’t really know if Peanut Corp. killed more people directly than Citi or AIG did indirectly.

On the other hand, if you want to look at it in terms of death caused, you have to consider United Healthcare a favorite.

If arrogance, pettiness, and generally having contempt for your customers turns out to be a major factor, then TicketMaster is going to the Final Four.

So that’s my Final Four, I suppose: Citibank, AIG, United Healthcare, and Ticketmaster.

I do like someone’s suggestion of the Federal Reserve. They ARE a private company, not a government entity, and they have behaved in horrible ways. However, among the companies that are included in the brackets, there is one thing that stands out to me. Only one company in the running has actually knowingly MURDERED citizens (Peanut Corp). That does kinda stand out, doesn’t it?

AIG is the obvious favorite, but don’t overlook the Peanut Corp upset in round two. Potentially bankrupting the country is tough to beat, but intentionally infecting people with salmonella could do it.

I think there should be a reshuffling of companies… too many of who I percieve are top contenders ended up on the left side: AIG, Peanut Corp, Best Buy, TicketMaster, etcBut I suppose every team has to lose eventually other than the best of the worst.

Wow. So much has changed since last year’s brackets. We’ve gone from companies with bad customer service and inferior products to companies that swindle tax payers and kill people with salmonella to save a buck. How far corporate America has fallen…

So HP is up against WalMart but Gateway, inventor of the Emachine (aka Ewaste) that gets fried every time a thunderstorm comes through. This spring we are going to call death times to at least 20 Emachines in our tiny computer store in Kansas, breaking last years record of 15. I guarantee it.

I predict a second round upset of Peanut corporation over, AIG. As bas as AIG has been, they have not been outright responsible for killing anyone. Walmart may be in the running for the whole trampled to death employee thing over Christmas.

I want to say AIG, but I think more people are affected on a day to day basis by Comcast’s greediness than were by AIG. I’m used to my tax dollars being wasted, so what’s a few dollars more to some old rich white dudes?

I expect to see Citibank advance forward – as we read more stories about their $10 Million redecorating scam with Taxpayer money.

Disappointed not to see Aetna on the list – they are always at the top of my most-hated list. Along with Comcast – who I expect to make it to the Final Four – they still have the worst pricing and customer service.

But Peanut Co. for the win – because people died from eating food they liked – and Peanut Co. didn’t care that people could get sick.

I take issue with AIG. They aren’t the problem, sure, they are horrible, but they could not have caused the total mess we’re in without the duplicitous B.S. of the U.S. Government. If they had simply let AIG fail, we would all say what a shame and we’d still be in this mess, except now we’ve thrown away billions of dollars on top of it.

I stand by my previous post, the U.S. Government deserves to win this title and there isn’t even a close second!

For a more accurate showing, should this be round robin? I have a feeling AIG is gonna stomp Peanut Corp. and force them out of the running early, but that’s not an accurate representation of their real ranking… They’re certainly gonna be higher on the hate list than, say, Verizon.

I’m going with Citibank as a sleeper to win the whole shebang. There’s a long time between now and when the winner is announced, and I predict the public is going to learn a lot of bad about Citibank between now and then. We already know the worst about AIG and Peanut Corp–I think.

I love the logo, even if it is lifted from the ncaa tournament.
AIG is going to steam roll over Target. Peanut Corp, will also win, which means that either Peanut Corp or AIG will be eliminated fairly early. That’s a shame because they both deserve to make it to the Final four.

AIG takes it, hands down… BUT, there are a few dark horses that may give them a run for their money. PayPal, Ticketmaster, Walmart have all done some amazingly boneheaded things in the past. There’s still time for another monumental screw up from them.

I can’t see AT&T making it to the final four. Ebay/paypal should have no problems getting there. They have screwed more bidders and sellers out of money than what AT&T could on it’s best day of the week.

Least with at&t you will hit a human to talk to eventually. Ebay/paypal, you are not even guaranteed that.

Please, tell me, how did Starbucks get on this list? They’ve done nothing but try to recover from the sinking economy. They’ve remained innocuous the entire year. How are peoples till hating on them when so many other big players have come into the scene?

@MarleneMops: We can’t vote yet but they’ll be putting up posts with polls in them. They’ll all be tagged with “Worst Company in America” so you can use [consumerist.com] to make sure you didn’t miss any polls.

Talk about kicking someone while they are down, Circuit City is done for already… But they were still existing during the period anyways. Though, if we are going for the worst company of 2009, the one not still in business seems like a certain winner. I guess it depends on your definition of “worst”.

For those mentioning other things like the “Federal Reserve”. That isn’t a company. If we were going with the worst part of the US federal government of 2009, then yeah…

With the heated emotions of late, we all know AIG is going to be the head of the pack. Even though some of the companies listed there actually were involved with endangering lives or killing people.

I would’ve put Peanut Corp and AIG on opposite sides of the bracket because you have to give the “best” teams the best chance at winning. Plus, Peanut Corp should be a #1 seed without question. Then it would probably be AIG vs Peanut Corp in the finals with AIG winning it all.

Hey consumerist guys, you know what would be fun? You know how big name websites like ESPN have a bracket buster challenge, where you get you submit a bracket, and then the person with the most points wins some sort of prize? You know how you guys have a big name backer for your website that constantly gets to test products, I assume for free? You know how I’ve always wanted a 50″ Samsung? Do you know that lots of people would visit your site just to take part in this contest?
…Do you guys get where I’m going with this?

I would say AIG but GM is tempting with the same attitude – we’re too big to fail so give us millions more than we said 2 months ago. And you think that number won’t keep rising like a nasty drug habit.

The pitchforks and rakes say AIG. But the Peanut People deserve some serious consideration just on style points.

Warning – shameless plug to follow:

You don’t have to wait! You can vote right away on all these companies at [www.vanno.com] And your votes get turned into more real-time rankings that you can argue about and comment on right away. The fun happens every day at Vanno…

Can I bet on Apple and take the 2,812,736,239:1 odds? Actually, now that Consumerist is no longer a Gawker property, those odds may have come down a bit. The same people who nonsensically nominated Diebold last year will probably focus their disdain on bete-noire AIG this time around, so that’s gotta be even, easy money.

Why are we even bothering with the brackets and voting bullshit? AIG versus the rest of the list is like pitting the Super Bowl Champion Pittsburgh Steelers against Special Olympics football teams.

Next year, my vote is to change the Golden Poo award to an Oscars-style competition: Worst Retailer. Worst Communications Company. Worst Financial Company. Worst Corporate Scandal. One winner from each catagory will then advance to the ultimate Worst Company in America.

Can we have a separate – dignified yet subdued – Awards Ceremony for Technical Achievements?
Hell, it doesn’t even have to be a competition, companies like Bealls, AT&T and Whole Foods are all winners!

@superberg:
Because Apple likes to be sneaking about screwing you, Microsoft at least makes it obvious and is up front about it. Vista isn’t as bad as people make it sound, but frankly Apple pulls some serious crap (DRM, new control chips, etc).

Some of you people are whacked. No other company matches the shenanigans of Peanut Corp. of America. They knowingly shipped peanut butter w/ salmonella and caused illness and death. What is worse that that? Hey, that hidden bank charge might be a bitch but at least you and your kids get to live another day.

Too bad AIG and Peanut corp will square off so early. They are clearly the most evil companies in America. Ticket Master is the third most evil company because they are nothing but a parasite. They greatly inflate ticket prices to concerts and charge ridiculous fees on top of those prices but bring nothing of value to the consumer.